We emphasized the need for burning seasoned wood at the Decathlon Q&A session. There needs to be a much wider audience for this message.
regulation on seasoned wood guarantee weigh in gang
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what is this green wood? I have red wood, white wood, brown wood, orange wood, grey wood, but never have I seen this famous green wood.
its Johns fault , he didn't have a chorus line or a "big cake"
im kidding, was actually a good thing that happened in DC. hope to be part of the next one especially if its in DC as its close enough to hop up therethat's a hint John
I was sitting next to you and blamed it on the manufacturers, and lived.
I wasn't gonna tote all those bricks back to Monroe
besides you were right in a way with that. the manufacturers (me included) should take more responsibility in educating our potential customers. we're trying at ESW, but its a slow thing, the retailers aren't helping in some cases either.aint easy though, the people who don't know from woodburning are actually easier to steer in the right direction. sadly its the "ive been burning wood for 200 years and I know you cant burn overnight without green wood cause it burns hotter and longer". most of those folks , you simply are not going to move off their position no matter how much "education" you throw out there they simply aren't going to accept it. thus , they aren't interested in newer technology because it goes against the grain of what they've known all their life.
And the whole time they are telling you this on their iPhone while driving down the road in their 40 MPG car and wanting to end the call so they can turn the sat radio back up. 
And the whole time they are telling you this on their iPhone while driving down the road in their 40 MPG car and wanting to end the call so they can turn the sat radio back up.
pretty much.
the thing is , that newer tech such as smartphones are easier for them to wrap their heads around as they are more easily able to adapt to that . with a woodstove they don't see the progress the same way. with a smartphone , one can use it as they did the old phone and learn from there as the "phone" side of it is still pretty much what they are used to. With sat radio, its still the same deal just more stations but the "use" is the same as an old AMFM set. with a "smartstove" however its different as you simply cannot heat with it with green wood. so they do not have a "reference" to work from, its a totally different way of burning wood than the old "dragons" the use of a "reburn" stove is so much more different than the old tech stoves, unlike the cellphones and sat radios which aren't really that different in their basic functions , they just have more functions that folks can learn while still using the "old tech" parts as they are used to.
one of the hardest things in my line of work to do is convince a person who has burned wood all their life with fireplaces and old tech stoves, how important seasoned wood is to the newer tech units.
I can equate this to another difficult issue I had when I was the Primary Firearms instructor for the 2/501st AVN over in ROK. even though these troops whom I had been charged with refreshing their BRM skills before going to the range to qualify had completed basic and been taught to shoot well enough to become soldiers, the ones which "grew up shooting" were often harder work with than the ones who had never dropped the hammer in their life prior to basic training. females generally shot better after my classes while a lot of males didn't really improve. the reason? they didn't have the bad habits to "unlearn".
with woodstoves , its a similar thing , folks that have burned for decades have simply ingrained these bad habits into their burning practices. for them to be successful with a modern appliance they literally have to be "untaught and retaught" in order to succeed. they have been in their minds successful as they have gotten heat to their expectations using the old ways and when the new ways are in conflict with the old ways its really hard for them to make that leap.
I can equate this to another difficult issue I had when I was the Primary Firearms instructor for the 2/501st AVN over in ROK. even though these troops whom I had been charged with refreshing their BRM skills before going to the range to qualify had completed basic and been taught to shoot well enough to become soldiers, the ones which "grew up shooting" were often harder work with than the ones who had never dropped the hammer in their life prior to basic training. females generally shot better after my classes while a lot of males didn't really improve. the reason? they didn't have the bad habits to "unlearn".
with woodstoves , its a similar thing , folks that have burned for decades have simply ingrained these bad habits into their burning practices. for them to be successful with a modern appliance they literally have to be "untaught and retaught" in order to succeed. they have been in their minds successful as they have gotten heat to their expectations using the old ways and when the new ways are in conflict with the old ways its really hard for them to make that leap.
We guarantee all our wood sold is less than 20% moisture content which we achieve by the use of solar kilns.
great John!, thanks for chiming in , I see you are from England. is there any regulation requiring this over there or is it a business decision to guarantee your wood stock? either way i'd rather buy wood with that guarantee than without it if I were needing wood for immediate consumption even if it were a n extra "quid" or whatever it is over there
In UK we have high tech woodstoves which have to meet strict air pollution controls which normally means the stoves have to burn hot which cannot be achieved if the moisture content is higher than 20%. Those who burn wet timber end up with stoves full of tar which can lead to chimney fires.
yeah, we do too, the trick is getting folks to understand that need for dry wood to get proper performance for just the reasons you noted.
On this side of the ocean , we have lots of people who like to blame creosote on softwoods like pine (nonsense).
Or who like to blame creosote on the failure of their new-fangled stoves to work properly (nonsense).
Some, to prevent accidental chimney fires from surprising them, choose to periodically clean their flues with on-purpose chimney fires.
We even have a few people who actually burn seasoned wood. But not (other than myself) in my immediate neighborhood. And I myself only learned what REAL seasoned wood was by coming to hearth.com a few years back. For me and everyone I knew, having wood season for over a year (let alone six months) only happened by accident!
yup!
mericuh
land of the free home of the idiot.
ok rant over.
too many folks have too many ingrained habits which are simply not conducive to clean burning. the more we strive to "unlearn them" of these bad habits the better for all involved.
well put BranchBurner
Dont want to get hung up about drying times but we achieve below 20% moisture content in our solar kilns in less than 3 months during the summer and 6 months during the winter.
Use of solar kilns for wood drying is very rare in this neck of the woods. And one of the problems we run into with air-drying times, at least here in the northeast, is that summers can be quite humid. Of course it depends on the species of wood, but something like oak -- which is preferred by many, due to high density/BTUs -- is VERY slow to air-dry to below 20%.
Another problem is that both commercial and home processors sometimes cut wood to length but then leave it unsplit until just before use, or they pile it in massive heaps on the ground rather than stacking, so seasoning is further retarded (and I mean that in both senses of the word).
It's been often discussed in the Woodshed forum, but my preferred method is now single-row stacking in a sunny, open area (again, thanks to those posting in the forums here). I used to stack three rows tightly together, but was amazed at how moist the inside of the pile would sometimes stay without adequate airflow.
Mike, do you have any reaction to my suggestion that stove manufacturer's emphasize this more greatly in their manuals, brochures and promotional materials? I realize the importance of seasoned wood is discussed within your brochure sections on operation and creosote, but couldn't there be a cheap and easy way to put even more emphasis on proper fuel use?
From your manual:
"Use only dry, seasoned wood. Green wood, besides burning at only 60 percent of the fuel value
of dry wood, deposits creosote on the inside of the stove and along the chimney. This can cause
extreme danger of chimney fire. To be called 'seasoned,' wood must be dried for a year."
This text is good, but buried in the middle of the owners manual inside a lot of pages of other text. It seems that it could be easily repeated on page one and/or page three, along with all the other cautions and CYA content.
You could also do some math and some finance for the reader: if green wood burns at only 60 percent of the fuel value of dry wood, then to get the same effective BTU output you would need to burn 1.67x as much green wood as dry wood. In other words, if you needed six cords of dry wood to heat your house, you would require ten cords of green wood to do the same job! Burning green wood is like burning money.
To go a step further (not that this will too likely happen) you could EASILY change "Damage from over-firing will void your warranty" to read "Damage from over-firing OR BURNING IMPROPER FUEL will void your warranty." Now, "improper fuel" could refer to garbage, plastics, petroleum products OR to green wood. Can burning green wood actually damage your stove? It really doesn't matter! So long as the implication is included, no matter how remote the possibility, the owner is implicitly being told burning green wood is potentially bad. He cannot be told this too often or in too many different ways... this is just one more way to tell him, and it tells him in another way that could hit him in the pocket book.
(As a justification for this inclusion: burning green wood does often cause users to burn at higher air settings. If this becomes habitual, continuing to operate at high air settings when the wood supply changes in quality COULD lead to overfiring. So burning green wood could indirectly damage the stove.)
Thoughts?
if we made the manuals out of fireproof paper we'd probably get quite a few back claiming "couldnt get the first fire started"
yeah , i hear ya branchburner.
i'd like to insert a paragraph on the importance of owning a moisture meter (may broach that again wit the boss)
it goes much further than what we do or do not put in the manual. real interactive education is really the best way to get the message out. like BG said we need a bigger audience.
yeah , i hear ya branchburner.
i'd like to insert a paragraph on the importance of owning a moisture meter (may broach that again wit the boss)
it goes much further than what we do or do not put in the manual. real interactive education is really the best way to get the message out. like BG said we need a bigger audience.
NE WOOD BURNER
Minister of Fire
- Dec 30, 2012
- 754
Never brought home dry wood.
the education is best served on the buyer. the market adapts to the need. I have listened to many a sales pitch and they are all slanted to the product they have on hand to unload.
a real wood burning household has many piles of wood. shorts, longs, just rights, softwood, hardwood, kindling, round, split, green, dry etc. The key is to know what pile to grab from.
The gasser and the new wood stoves are easy to adapt to if you have already been burning wood the proper way. If new to burning wood stocking up early is the answer.
the education is best served on the buyer. the market adapts to the need. I have listened to many a sales pitch and they are all slanted to the product they have on hand to unload.
a real wood burning household has many piles of wood. shorts, longs, just rights, softwood, hardwood, kindling, round, split, green, dry etc. The key is to know what pile to grab from.
The gasser and the new wood stoves are easy to adapt to if you have already been burning wood the proper way. If new to burning wood stocking up early is the answer.
lol
I'm the first to admit, half the time I don't look at the manual for something I've bought until AFTER things go wrong.
The problem will always be for many people, beyond making sure their setup is ok for safety/code/insurance (if even that), a modern stove is no different than an ancient stove: just a metal box you put wood into, and wood is wood is wood. And how would they even know that they were using too much wood or getting poor performance if they never had good performance to compare?
It like the guy who brought his chainsaw back to the shop because he finally decided it wasn't cutting to his expectations or satisfaction: the dealer starts it up and the guy jumps back and says, "What's that noise!?"
that may be the single funniest thing ive ever read in here, sad part is i can actually see that happening.
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